Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush and More Set for 'The King's Speech' Film

Michael Gambon has appeared many times on both stage and screen. He began performing at the Birmingham Repertory Company in Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus. In 1974, he starred in the Alan Ayckbourn play The Norman Conquests, which transfered to the west end. At the National Theatre, he performed in Harold Pinter's Betrayal. Gambon has appeared in Old Times at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and as Volpone in Pinter's Mountain Language. In 2001 he played what he described as "a physically repulsive" Davies in Patrick Marber's revival of Pinter's The Caretaker, but he found the rehearsal period an unhappy experience, and felt that he had let down the author. A year later, playing opposite Daniel Craig, he portrayed the father of a series of cloned sons in Caryl Churchill's A Number at the Royal Court, notable for a recumbent moment when he smoked a cigarette, the brightly lit spiral of smoke rising against a black backdrop, an effect which he dreamed up during rehearsals. In 2004 he finally achieved a life-long ambition to play Sir John Falstaff, in Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre production of Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, co-starring with Matthew Macfadyen as Prince Hal.